I was a cognitive neuroscience major in school, but my experience was mostly biological. I haven’t tried CBT before, but I will bring that up as a possible interest to pursue. If your post (s) are any indication of CBT, I’ve been responsive.

For me it would be aid in closure to figure out what motivated him to keep me at arms reach and to repeatedly not respect my clearly stated boundaries. In the past relationship that brought me to therapy a few years back, hearing that his abusive actions were because he had a biological mental health problem. He was bipolar, off meds, so he wasn’t the person I thought he was when I fell in love with him. iT was easier to forgive myself for the failure of that relationship. I learned how to look for signs of this and it has been helpful in avoiding situations with this type of person I am obviously not able to deal with.

I think I have a better chance of figuring myself out than I do this guy out. As my friends had concluded many years ago, and as he has recently concluded for himself, he is “just a bad person who does bad things to me”. My conclusion, which as you said is most likely not true, is that he was an unhappy person inside and he uses people to feel better about himself. He took my forgiveness was like him forgiving himself for the past actions although he never fully accepted responsibility. As for keeping me at arms length, I’d like to think it was because he knew he was such a bad person he didn’t want to hurt me by messing up a relationship doomed from the start. As to why he would isolate me and keep me away from his friends and family? Possibly that I represented guilt and shame?
These questions are distracting me in the short term but I can’t get them out of my thoughts.